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"Phone In One Hand, Ticket In the Other"
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that federal regulators plan a pilot project to test 'high visibility' crackdown efforts to curb cellphone use by drivers in two cities, Hartford and Syracuse, spending $200,000 in each city, while each state would contribute $100,000 more. The Transportation Department says it wants to send the message: 'Phone in One Hand. Ticket in the Other,' and plans on ramping up enforcement on state bans of hands-free phones by motorists, advertising the campaigns and undertaking studies to see if the efforts curb behavior and attitudes. Safety advocates say that curbing the behavior requires enforcement and education, which they say has been clearly evident in past efforts with seat belts with the 'Click It or Ticket Program' (PDF) that helped increase seat belt use to 83% nationally. 'It's time for drivers to act responsibly, put their hands on the wheel and focus on the road,' says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who last year called distracted driving an 'epidemic.'"
We have passed a law about the same. But there's so few Police on patrol the law just isn't being enforced. I still see plenty of drivers hand holding a mobile, despite the fact you can get a bluetooth headset for £8 in the UK.
In the UK we drive largely manual gearbox and holding a phone while driving means not changing gear or letting go of the steering wheel while changing gear!
a good slogan - the driver can reclaim their phone, sealed in the same bag the officer had the driver put it in, down at the station 2 hours later. worse than any ticket.
The Transportation Department says it ... plans on ramping up enforcement on state bans of hands-free phones by motorists...
Why not target hand-held phones before going after hands-free phones?
If you want to reduce distracted driving, just enforce fines on people doing it. Make it so people are likely enough to get caught that they'll think twice beforehand. Slap a huge fine (or worse) on anyone who crashes their car due to an obvious and avoidable distraction. Forget the fancy ad campaign; people don't care. Put the money toward a decent public transit system so people don't have to choose between keeping in touch and traveling.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
You know what I did to keep myself awake and alert? Whipped out the phone and talked to someone.
Yeah, I suppose pulling off the road, or better yet, staying put is out of the question. I mean, if falling asleep at the wheel is so dangerous to you, why are you driving without adequate rest yourself? Pretty nasty habit you got there.. Too bad somebody will probably have to get hurt before you are taken off the road.. All of a sudden I hate you..
Nope. Some people sing to the radio. For that matter, some people talk to the radio.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
...if a driver is using a hands-free phone? Watch for lip motion?
Hey I take offence there. Now as a person with a split personality, I feel this is going to discriminate against me while I speak to my other personality. ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
> Some people can drive and talk safely.
Yeah. I hear this a lot. And it's true. Everyone seems to be able to use a cell phone and drive safely. Except for the ones that got into an accident. Though, up until that point, I suppose they considered themselves among that group. I personally despise cell phone drivers, but am not sure if I would go as far as a ban. I'm on the fence there. Texting though. Texting is bad. I drive about 45 miles of highway each way on my commute. It's amazing how many drivers I see looking down instead of forward. The ones doing it "safely" are going about 10 miles under the speed limit. If "safe" means it's not THEM that cause the accident, then fine.
One thing in all this that frightens me is the fact that by letting law enforcement pull someone over based on something that is not a clear moving violation, but something the can claim to witness happening inside a vehicle,
we are effectively giving them a tool for racial profiling. This power seems ripe for abuse.
1) See someone who "looks" like they might be carrying something illegal
2) Pull them over, obtain cause to search vehicle
3) If successful, book them
4) If failure, cite them for cell phone use.
How easy is it for a customer to obtain proof that they were or were not texting at a given time?
How easy is it for Law Enforcement?
Is this proof permissible?
I live in the "great" state of NJ, and while fist-pumping my way home from the bus stop (on foot), I saw not one but two of my town's police officers driving in (seperate) patrol cars while holding a cell phone to one ear. And no, their lights were not on, and there was no emergency. Shouldn't they be held to a higher standard, or at least the same one us serfs are?
and so what did people do before google maps? ohh yea, pull off at the next exit, check paper map, continue on their way.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
"Click it or Ticket", "Over the limit, Under arrest", and its ilk irritate me to no end. I *loathe* being talked down to like a child, with these cutesy slogans
Well, if people didn't act like irresponsible children, it wouldn't be necessary to talk down to them, now would it?
This anti-cellphone jihad really makes no sense to me.
Huh? I saw nothing about anyone being "anti-cellphone". Anti-don't-be-a-fucking-idiot-while-driving, sure, but not anti-cellphone. Where'd you get that stupid idea?
If we're going to waste money on "educating" people about the dangers of cell phones, why don't we educate them on the dangers of distracted driving in general?
Good idea! We probably should! On the other hand, cellphones seem to have caused a very drastic increase in the number of distracted drivers on the road, and so it makes sense to target that one issue specifically, due to how widespread it is.
You know what I did to keep myself awake and alert? Whipped out the phone and talked to someone.
Here's a better idea: Pull over to the side of the road and take a quick nap. As it is, you just ended up trading one irresponsible behaviour for another. Kinda like a child.
Every time I see some stupid fucking douchebag barking into his cellphone, or some giggle brained bleeth yammering into her iPhone, I curse the gods for not letting me be able to fire rockets or RPGs at those stupid fucks as they blunder their way down the highway and endangering the lives of the rest of us with their inattention and sense of entitlement.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I rarely dial out when driving. I hate doing it too. Most of the time if I receive a call, I'll let it go.
So what I want is a separate voicemail greeting or some other way of communicating status which will let me say that I'm on my goddamn way, so stop calling me to ask where I am. Because as it is right now, I can't effectively communicate the difference between this and my usual "I don't feel like taking your call." (There is a difference.)
So really, phone systems need to be designed better for this use case.
Yeah, do that. Pull over on I-5 while everyone else goes by at 80, you can absolutely pull over and stop, have a chat and that's perfectly safe. So safe that I'll read about it in tomorrows OSP flash update. Meanwhile, why don't you fix your makeup, hair, and finish off that mocha. Oh, and your kids are crying in the back seat. The oldest one just threw his icecream against the front window. The dog is barking. The radio is too loud. Your passenger is trying to get your attention to point out the crazy guy on his cell phone in the next car.
It's likely most people won't accept this, but the bottom line is that some of us are actually capable of handling our vehicles, AND a cell phone. If susie homemaker can put 7 children, a couple dogs and another house wife into her van, and drive around like that, then why is the enforcement centered on cell phones? They are hardly the only distracting item in the cab.
This entire enforcement effort centers on cell phones, but the real threat is something else entirely.
I hate these damn slogans too.... but for me, I think it's their authoritarian "tough guy" attitude with them that irks me the most. We already have FAR too many problems with police officers who think they're "above the law" and that the best way to handle any situation is to get up in people's faces and bark out commands. Why reinforce this police-state B.S. with radio and TV advertising?
I live in Missouri, but being in St. Louis, I'm real close to the Illinois border, so we hear plenty of IL based commercials on our radio stations. The IL state ones were some of the most offensive, along these lines. They really hammered home that whole "We WILL give you a ticket!" and "You WILL be arrested!" thing.....
We live in a land of "control freaks" who want to tell everyone else how to conduct their personal affairs. It's always in the name of a lofty goal like "safety!" too. But the fact is, people are unique. Studies have proven that there is a minority out there who really can effectively multitask talking on a cellphone in their hand and driving. Others realize it's an added distraction, but they're only using their phone the bare minimum essential for what they're doing. (EG. Most courier services I know communicate with their drivers via Nextel phones. It's simply not possible to do the job properly if you don't juggle your phone a little bit with your driving. You need to know if dispatch wants you to stop before you reach a destination to pick up an additional package.)
And as others have said, we seem to just be singling out cellphones because they're everybody's favorite item to bash on right now. (Let's face it... It's easy to observe someone driving while they've got a phone held up to their ear. So many people hate cellphones anyway, because they equate them with their workplace forcing them to use one to "keep them on a leash" and so on, they've got immediate negative reactions to what they're seeing.) But who's to say people's car stereos aren't just as bad a distraction, if not worse? Oh! But wait a minute! We don't WANT to address that possibility, because most of us really LIKE listening to the radio while we drive. Never-mind the fact a person might not be able to hear the siren of an oncoming fire truck or ambulance, right? Don't bother counting all the accidents that happen when a person takes their eyes off the road at the wrong moment to change the station or adjust the radio.....
As for driving while too tired? Yep, that's dangerous too ... but again, different people have different tolerance levels. Some people I know can do really long drives straight-through, and have proven their competence at it by doing it time after time after time, without once having an accident. Others (like myself) would have to stop after about half that distance to get some rest and give my eyes a break. Banning cellphone usage in cars is about as sensible as passing laws requiring you prove you slept a minimum of 8 to 9 hours the previous night, any time you're stopped and checked for "tiredness"!
don't get me wrong, i'm not fond of any of these technological constrictions on my free-will to "misbehave" -- but, if we've decided to crack down on cell-phone use while driving why not go all big brother tech and: "you have received this ticket (via the post) because a cell-phone number registered to you was recorded at passing through [3] cell towers in excess of [45 mph]" (the [x] as adjustable parameters depending on the strictness of the constabulary)" ??
I don't know about you, but I live very near a road, I work very near a road, and the vast majority of the places I want to go are very near a road.
So passengers can't use their cell phone?
"His name was James Damore."
Three times in this last week I've tried to use a cross-walk with the light saying I had to right of way only to almost be hit by some twat blowing through while gabbing on their phone.
Having a cellphone is a privilege, not a fucking right. The right, in this case, is for me to be able to go about my life and not get run over by some self-serving ass.
10-15 years ago before everyone had one, society still worked pretty OK. What's changed? Only people's perception that they're that important they need to be reachable every second of the day.
No sig for you!!
You say that as though somehow using a phone is an integral part of driving. Guess what. A couple of decades ago very few people had phones and they drove fine without them. What is so damn hard about not chatting away or doing something else while directing a multi-ton vehicle? If you really need to talk, pull over, stop the vehicle, and carry on with your conversation. You say it as though we can't easily pull over. People pull over all the time on the highway for emergencies such as flat tires. You don't need special flat tire changing areas to stop your vehicle. If the conversation is not important enough for you to do that, then wait and talk later.
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Tell you what, Mr Regulator. Why don't you install "cell phone stops" every 1 mile on the roads, where we can safely pull over and make or receive calls before you tell us that we can't use them.
Are you actually serious? You're really so addicted to making and receiving calls that you feel the need to build special stops "every mile" along the roadside for the express purpose of being able to make a call?
Grow up, and realize you might be out of communication sometimes. If you're such a junkie you can't stand the thought of missing a call for the perhaps 10-15 minutes it might take to pull off to an exit and make your important call.. then you need treatment, not cell phone stops.
AccountKiller
Of course, the numbers will just be ignored by folks who swear that that one woman who they saw run a redlight four years ago are the rule, because it's the eleventy thousand perfectly normal, not in any way out-of-the-ordinary things we see happen every day that we remember perfectly.
* Total fatalities, fatalities per X drivers, fatalities per X miles driven ...
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
You must be too young to remember the days of people driving with a paper map covering the steering wheel, the dashboard and (occasionally) the passenger.
If I have to answer a quick call while I'm driving, it is MUCH safer for me to
..stop the fucking car before you answer.
Which part of "Ignore the ringing phone" is so difficult?
and why isn't law enforcement doing anything about screaming kids in the car? i'd have thought that's obvious - because kids scream, it's what they do and there's nothing that can be don about it (by police anyway). douche bags driving around talking on their cell on the other hand, IS something they can fix. it's about controlling the risks you can control.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
except by the metric, where we actually measure people's ability to drive while talking on the phone?
http://psych.pomona.edu/SRC/Cell%20phone%20study%20summary.pdf
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
That's why you put it in your ear and connect it to your phone while you're stopped. OMGWAFI
THIS. I ride a motorcycle and over time have learned to become highly aware of what everyone else is doing around me. I cannot tell you how many times I have almost been merged into by someone refusing to even turn their head to the side to see if someone is next to them. Cagers also love to pull out in front of us, ride our arses, and in general be effing dangerous to everyone around them. Would love to place it all at the feet of cell phone usage but most of the time it is simple lack of attention, putting on makeup, drinking their coffee, watching their GPS screen. The list goes on and on. Anymore I navigate in traffic with the main goal of trying to make sure as few of the bastards are around me at any given time. I wear full gear all the time but I have no illusions about my fate in a collision so a little paranoia has gone a long way.
The problem is people's attitude and lifestyle choices which includes cell phone usage. The major offenders seem to drive large vehicles such as minivans and SUV's but interestingly enough not large pickups or heavy haulers such as semi's and the like. My personal guess is that the same people who choose a vehicle based on how "safe" it is then stops caring about anyone else's safety. I hate saying it but Susie Homemaker seems to be the worst offender.
In our current police state (not just the U.S., but most of the western world now) where the police departments have cameras all over the cities and traffic systems, can't they just have 2-3 people sitting at a console, taking snap shots of drivers with their phones to their ears and clicking a mouse button to send them a ticket in the mail?
Seriously, it seems to me, a single person with a 30" screen should be able to monitor 16 locations simultaneously without even trying. Using simple motion detection on each camera, it would be possible to make sure each of the 16 windows on their screen could be guaranteed to have traffic on them. As a result, they could probably be sending out 2-3 tickets every minute. At $200 a ticket, that would yield about $500 a minute for $30,000 an hour, $180,000 a day for at least a while.
So they're willing to chip in a whole $200,000 to make this happen? Are you serious? I mean, this could be the biggest cash cow in the history of traffic duty. Forget the policemans' ball, a single full time employee could raise more money for the police department than all the traffic cops in a state combined. Eventually when people start getting better at hiding their phones from the cameras (you don't think they'll stop doing it do you?) people will be cautious most of the time and simply expect they're being watched.
I just can't figure out if the article also talks about banning hands free use of phones as well. Are they seriously saying they want to simply ban cell phone use while driving altogether? It won't happen. It's a waste of time. If they want get people to stop holding phones up to their ears, they have to agree to the hands free or people will just prefer to pay the tickets.
I am tired of pet causes like this that demonize slightly risky behavior like driving buzzed and bringing a knife to school, you know, behaviors that make life exciting and worth living. So you might get killed by some dumbass on his phone, if you were a decent driver you should be able to avoid it. I know I avoid getting killed by some prick in an SUV at least twice a week.
So...
You think avoiding drunk SUV drivers is the meaning of life. Haven't you ever had sex or gone fishing or eaten a great meal at a fine restaurant or gone to see a live broadway production or entered a live televised poker tournament in vegas or read a really good book or sat in front of fireplace on a cold winter's night with someone you love and just talked or gone to the beach and made a new friend? There are so many, many things to do that make life worth living that either don't involve huge amounts of (slightly) risky behaviour or much importantly don't create that risk for others. This is the issue and why drunk driving is demonized (if a police officer can tell that you are buzzed driving, its drunk driving. No two ways about it, you should go to jail for it). The point of school isn't to get a bunch of youngerish people in one place so someone can bring a gun or a knife and maybe hurt or kill a bunch of people. It sure as hell isn't why I went to school, and if I thought for a second it was a remote possibility I would have left (which I eventually did, and not because of graduation).
1 in 20 crashes involves a cell phone, 41000 people died in car crashes last year, so maybe 2050 deaths a year are caused by cell phones.
Logical failure; in order to assume that death rate in car crashes where cell phone use is involved is approximately equal to the death rate in the population of all car crashes would in fact have to assume that cell phones do not cause crashes and that cell phone use is not related to the severity of those crashes. The number of crashes due to cell phone use is not related to the number of deaths involved in those crashes. That 41k deaths is within 30 days, by the way (and is for 2007, not last year). Meanwhile, there were over 10 million vehicle accidents. Each year, how many people on cell phones are hitting parked cars and driving off, not even recognizing they have hit someone? I bet its more than 41000. Each year, how many people on their cell phones are sitting at green lights for 5, 10, 20 seconds, until the light turns yellow again because they aren't paying attention? I bet its more than 10 million. Meanwhile, what about the 15-16-17 year old learning how to drive on their learner's permit? The British expat learning to drive on the right (correct) side of the road? Should they die because some dumbass is talking on their cellphone? Should they get rear ended while stopped at a red light by some dumbass on their cell phone? Should they have to swerve to avoid some dumbass on their cell phone? As a good driver, I shouldn't have to, but I do, all the damn time.
Guess what else: every study that's been done on the subject corroborates the argument that passengers are at worst a non-factor while cell conversations are a significant distraction. That's why it's an "inevitable response": your anecdotal argument doesn't beat actual evidence.
Your passengers don't have to be considerate, they have to value their lives. Which means that they will help if they are: (a) sober, (b) awake, and (c) more than about 8 years old. Also, even if your passengers are stupid and no help, if the passengers in 9 out of every 10 other vehicles are a help then there's still much more justification for banning hands-free and not banning speaking to passengers.
I am officially gone from